More Potatoes

Last year I tried an experiment with growing potatoes in tires and it seemed to work okay. Of the five varieties I planted, most seemed to produce a ton of potatoes in the first tire, a few in the second, and none in the third. I saved a couple of each variety from the harvest and decided to replant them this year.

The main reason I decided this method was successful enough to use again is due to the space-saving nature of growing potatoes this way. Our garden has become quite full and I don’t feel I have the space to grow ten mounds of potatoes. But I enjoy the diversity of harvesting russet, red, purple, Yukon and fingerlings from my own backyard.

I would love to say I will actually water them this year, but that is unlikely. Regardless, last year they gave me brilliant flowers July-September and I still walked away in October with an okay crop. One thing I can do better is staying on top of adding soil. Previously I added soil when the greens were roughly 4″, but many times they had gotten higher. This year I am aiming to cover them every 2″ in an attempt to stay more proactive.

Some day I will most likely recycle all of these tires and plant something perrenial and fabulous here, dividing the patio from the garden. Flowering quince, jujube, more blueberries are all plants I have envisioned here. But it’s a crappy economy and changes are around the corner. Maybe in a few years, but until then it’s potato time!

I’ve been reading up on vertical potatoes and I learned something interesting: some potato varieties will NOT work well with this method. Yukon golds apparently only put out one crop at the very bottom of your vertical stack while others, such as Yellow Fin, do just fine.

I am in OK…planted my Yukon Gold in two 4-tire stacks…Poor production as of today. Guess I didn’t know about Yukons only yeilding 1 tire worth. Will try Russetts next and probably leave in dirt more than 2 months. What do you think?

Robert, if I had watered mine more I may have had better production. It’s also good to wait until the fall for harvesting, so they have a whole season of growth. I plant mine typically around St. Paddy’s day and harvest in October. I have also found the best tasting veggies are usually the ones with lower production. They are often still worth growing because they taste fantastic!

Our community garden is going to try this, but after researching about leaching of heavy metals from tires, and tubers being pretty happy to absorb stuff from soil, we are going to make cylinders from wire mesh instead. We’ll see how it goes. Thanks for the tip on the Yukon Golds!